flairwars_orangefandomcom-20200214-history
General History of Orange
The beginning The Orange subreddit, r/TheOrangeArmyHQ, was founded on Apr 23rd 2018 by u/tresbros. Despite creating the subreddit rather late in the game, it didn't hinder Orange's capability of being able to muster enough manpower when needed - both in cooperation with Yellow in the first ever alliance (Yellorange), or on their own, as they proved by winning the first Battle ever. Shortly after forming the Yellorange alliance out of the common hate of Purple and sustaining an attack from the Greens, there was a 48 hour exchange of limes, oranges and lemons on the Orange, Yellow and Green subreddit, referred to later as the Citrus War. During this time, Red created their own subreddit too. After short negotiations, together, the three colours formed the so called ROY alliance, with GCP forming in response on the very same day. Orange rose to prominence very quickly. Threatened in power ranking only by Greens and Yellows, they were arguably the strongest colour at the very beginning of Flairwars. This trend only continued as the ROY/Orange Discord was created, arguably the most successful server besides the Green Discord, under u/SwedishMango's stellar management. It was the hub of all important diplomatic meetings. At this point in time, Orange didn't really have a government. Instead, it had a "Supreme Commander" - a title which belonged to its founder, u/tresbros, and two "Generals": u/Luigi2586 and u/SwedishMango. The fall of ROY, the fall of Orange ROY alliance lasted for over a month and a half - an incredibly long time, especially so early into the game. Ultimately, with the TrueYellow movement, there had been an inner turmoil, escalating into Red holding a poll whether to stay in the alliance or not. The results ended in favor of staying, but that's where Orange took everyone by surprise by leaving ROY first based on their own poll. Red followed shortly after, ending one chapter of Flairwars history as ROY disbanded on Jun 9th, 2018. A couple of days after that, after the community decided on new alliance rules to prevent another 1v1 situation that was the ROY vs GCP, Orange took a hit which brought it to its knees: on Jun 14th, new moderators were selected by the founder u/Mythiie: u/Chesssx from Blue, u/SSeptic from Green and u/SwedishMango from Orange. As older members went inactive and Mango wasn't there to hold Orange together anymore, the colour's strength quickly faded. What was once arguably the strongest colour was now considered to be the weakest of them all. For the entire month of July, the inner joke was that Orange doesn't have more than 3 active members. Even with BLED, Gurple and later Sprite alliances forming, Orange didn't ally with anyone, facing all the 5 remaining colours alone - none of which was too keen to attack them as it would be seen as unfair. Eventually, after being added as another Orange moderator, u/hi_bert attempted to reform the colour by holding the first Orange elections which were meant to engage the remaining active users. Portal Together with the reforms that Orange was going through internally, it was the alliance with Blue (after the dissolution of BLED) that really helped to get Orange back on their feet. Not only were they successful in raids once more, they got a lot of new users active in August around the trending day thanks to the stellar recruiting efforts of u/hi_bert. Orange even won Battle 10 with u/Jeweljessec's contribution. Portal was a very successful alliance, both raid wise and culturally too. It's mascot, Spectra, was iconic, and Orange really bonded with Blue like few colours have bonded before. Even months after the alliance ended, it was remembered as one of the best pacts - not necessarily because it was strong (because especially compared to Royal, it wasn't), but because both the colours vibed together really well. This was surprising to everyone because before they allied, Orange and Blue hated each other. With a lot of new people at the reigns, such as u/PrimalDialga476, u/blaiddbrenin, u/corridoruncertainty, u/Ritchfjugg (u/appleRadiation), u/DBug113, u/PTSDGoat and u/Jeweljessec, together with u/SwedishMango returning to Orange and holding art competitions, Orange caught a second wind, though they were still considered to be one of the weaker factions. That feeling was only amplified by Green getting stronger again in the early October, and u/BlastoGypsy leaving Orange to mod r/flairwars didn't exactly help either. To boost their military strength, they formed an alliance with Yellow once more: Solar. The Corgining After Blue, Red and Green, now it was Orange's turn to become the Flairwars' punchbag. Only unlike the other colours, they were partly to blame too. One reason for that were u/DBug113's (in)famous Corgining raids - one man raids during which he covered the pages of other colours, most often Green, in images of Orange corgis. What everyone perceived as a joke for the first time quickly turned into annoyance not only for the colours being raided, but also for the Orange foreign affairs, having to smooth out intercolour relationship after each raid. Because of these, an internal rule that the Althing has to allow the raid first has been put in place. The shitstorm #1 But the Corginings were only a part of why other colours didn't like Orange too much. There were more people in the Orange leadership acting like "diplomatic handgrenades" - acting without thinking about what consequences their actions will have for their colour, or simply not caring about that. A sizeable portion of the Orange leadership at the time acted towards other colours with great hostility. u/DBug113 with his corginings and threats to do so, u/corridoruncertainty openly mocking other colours in their diplomatic channels, u/PTSDGoat just being hostile. Orange not only did not punish them for straining their intercolour relationships, they awarded some of them with higher ranks and defended their behavior no matter what they did - for example as DBug pinged the entirety of Yellow on Discord right before the first round of Battle 11 started and then tried to pin the blame on Yellow for not being able to take jokes. The anti-Orange mood only strengthened. Green raided Orange before a Battle 11 round and their leadership, in rage, decided to collectively leave the Discord server right as the final round of B11 was about to start. There was a general confusion and panic in the community leaders' chat about this move; did the other colours go too far this time? Was Orange being bullied? The moderators, knowing well that Orange intends to rejoin just in time for the Battle to continue normally, decided against delaying the round just to cave in to their sulking as delaying would damage their rival, Purple, who would lose people available for the Battle. Not delaying sparked a wave of anger in the community - initially aimed at the mods, then when learned about their true intent, at Orange. The shitstorm #2 Solar was previously disbanded by a mutual agreement to reset all alliances and Yellow diplomacy was still on a cooldown. After a day of everyone arguing about the sudden leadership departure from Discord before the Battle, in an attempt to repair the relationships, Green offered Orange an alliance - the Jack'o'lliance, as Halloween was closing in, with Portal 2 forming soon after that. Except for the Green and Blue allies and Red who were mostly indifferent, other relationships were very damaged. The reason for that was one of the prominent Orange leaders exploiting a Yellow member's trust and also rudely mocking Purples in the diplomatic channels. This ultimately lead to Purple and Yellow forging a plan: raid Orange an entire week in a row for their insolence, no mercy. This was one of the rare occasions when the moderators stepped in to advise against actual bullying of a colour. Neither colour followed the plan in the end; Yellow raided, but not that much, and Purple held three quick skirmishes to take revenge, but not to stomp Orange into the ground entirely. And then there was Halloween. A holiday for majority of the Flairwars participants, but also a day when Yellow organized a raid on Orange and called both their allies, Purple and Red, to help. Yellow counted on Green and Blue to help Orange out, only they stayed neutral because of the Greed and Galaxy alliances, leaving Orange alone against 3 other colours. Orange viewed this as a betrayal and stubbornly refused to surrender, even though they were desperately outnumbered. The raid dragged on for hours straight, with neither party willing to budge. It wasn't its length that angered most of the people, it was that Orange didn't offer any other diplomatic solution how to end the situation other than the attackers surrendering, which didn't make sense for them as they were clearly on the winning side. This whole mess escalated to very heated arguments both on Discord and Reddit, splitting the community apart. Even today, the Halloween is remembered as one of the most tragic days in Flairwars history, a day which marked the remains of the community forever. Almost shitstorm #3 After the Halloween fiasco, the Jack'o'lliance was ended a few days earlier than anticipated. A lot of hurt was on both sides of the argument, and in Orange's case, also a lot of salt. Convinced that the other colours hate them because of how they treated Orange but refusing to see that those were mostly just reactions to their own actions, especially with the continued corgi threats and passive aggressive rants almost to the point of insulting Yellow leaders, Orange was planning to go nuclear. Things were so bad that the cleanup help after a Green raid was viewed as patronizing and as another proof that other colours just look down on Orange. This ultimately led to the single largest mod intervention in the game up until then, telling Orange to chill the fuck out. And they did. The 180° turn in behavior that Orange did was stunningly amazing. There was a lot of work ahead of them to fix the broken relationships, some of them seemingly beyond repair, but they did their best, especially with the help of u/blaiddbrenin, u/sier818 and u/jeweljessec - and in the long term, it ultimately paid off. Blood Orange, Sunset, Ireland Allying with Red in a Blood Orange alliance, the December was otherwise uneventful. Even though their public image vastly improved compared to October-November, together with Red, Orange was still the only colour otherwise to lose in Battle 15 in the January Oil raids. After the no alliance period for the Battle raids was over, two new pacts were born: Sunset with Purple, and Ireland with Green. Both of the alliances were very successful. With their help, Orange was able to secure the first ever totem season victory. Portal: Remastered, Goldfish Gang For two weeks in February, Orange was going solo until ultimately bonding with Blue again in yet another Portal alliance, a third one so far. Knowing that they most likely won't win this totem season anymore and wanting to improve their long strained relationships with Yellow, Orange decided to pull the ultimate prank on all other colours: just give Yellows all of their totems. This move made Purple furious, seeing as even with Green's help, they now had the same amount of totems as Yellow and that they helped Orange win the previous totem season. However, Yellow very understandably adored this diplomatic move and as soon as the new season started, a Yellow-Orange alliance was born under the name "Goldfish Gang". Both the colours seemed to be very happy with this pact. At the end of the March totem season, Orange decided to transfer their remaining totem to Yellow again, only for the trade to be interrupted by Green, souring the Green and Yellow relationship. Battle 17 Right in the middle of the r/findareddit boom, the scheduled Battle 17 was announced. Even though Purple had a great head start, through meticulous effort and amazing teamwork of both old and new users alike, Orange was able to snatch the Battle victory from them, claiming Pink for their own. Under the Orange Tree After stepping down as a moderator and returning back to both Flairwars and Orange, u/BlastoGypsy started a splinter faction with a very different view on what the government should look like. It gained a substantial traction not only the Althing, but in the other colours as well. Members of other colours were encouraged to help in walling the subreddit and raiding which, despite the rules not counting with splinter factions, was considered to be against the NOD rules as most of the people of other factions didn't make their own splinters to cooperate with the Tree. Despite the large amount of support this splinter gained in the former Orange government, once Blasto left again, close to none of his government ideas have been carried out. Grapefruit and The Orange Juice After the subreddit first year anniversary celebration was over, Orange allied with Red in the Grapefruit alliance. After Blue transferred all their assets in Battle 19 to Purple, Red organized a deal trying to get the remaining colours to pitch in all their assets. The colour who'd have the most assets before the end of the Battle would get them all. Orange originally agreed to this plan, but with Purple throwing in counteroffers, they reconsidered and decided to stay neutral after all. The Grapefruit alliance ended prematurely with Orange entering their own version of The Juice. The Juice was originally a period in the Yellow history when they focused on developing their colour internally, not raiding and staying out of alliances. It started promising in Orange as well, with them starting the transition to their own new Orange Discord server, but then instead of continuing the internal development by reforming their government, Reddit interaction or hosting events, they... did nothing. By basically giving up on playing Flairwars for a month, Orange has started to spiral down into inactivity again. During the Juice, u/blaiddbrenin stepped down as the Orange king and was substituted by u/appleRadiation. Alliance with Yellow and the steep drop in power The Juice ended with Orange helping Yellow by upvoting them in a raid a the end of May, helping Yellow achieve the tie with Green. After this, the relationship developed into a full alliance. Facing the square alliance chain of Red - Green - Blue - Purple, it wasn't very successful militarily. Not only because they were being outnumbered in raids, but because Orange's activity took a sudden hit and they didn't really participate in either offense of defense, making the raids against them feel more like 3v1 instead of 3v2 from the Yellow point of view. This alliance was ended by the alliance reset at the start of July. The Orange revolution With the activity of the colour being so low, elected people in the Althing included, regular Orange members were not happy. On June 25th, 2019, a revolution movement was started by u/PTSDGoat and u/Olis01 with the intent to reform Orange to their former glory. It was meant to reform how the government was structured, how it worked and to hold people accountable for their (in)actions. As the emotions calmed down and everything was talked out, the Althing agreed that something needs to change and promised to gradually implement the discussed changes. During the inner turmoil, the Orange king u/appleRadiation stepped down and ceded the throne to u/sier818